Queen of the Short Story

Alice Munro

In a world of sound bites, headlines, tweets, fleeting impressions and big-bang events, sometimes a few written words appear that make you stop and wonder. For me, that was Alice Munro.

Renowned for her short stories -- she won a Nobel Prize in Literature -- Munro, 92, has  passed into another world beyond this one. Although to read her, you knew she'd been moving back and forth in time and space for many years.

Her obituary appeared in the NY Times today. 

I first discovered the Canadian writer through a short story she wrote for the New Yorker magazine. I was hooked by her prose and mesmerized by her story telling, even as her characters were primarily women and the settings were the humble prairie towns of southwestern Ontario near Lake Huron. She has been called the region's Chekhov. 

She mastered the lost art of the short story.  The critics described her work as "practically perfect."

In order to read short fiction, I need to be wowed from the get-go. These days most published short stories lose me immediately. No connection. They plod into personal introspection. Hello? Where's the story?

Munro's stories are often "baffling and paradoxical," unlike the woman who wrote them, according to those who knew her. She was a mother and wife and writer. Shy, she avoided celebrity. 

Such literary talent and effort devoted to the short story, Munro never penned a novel. "I don't really understand a novel," she said. "I don't understand where the excitement is supposed to come in a novel, and I do in a story. There's a kind of tension that if I'm getting a story right I can feel right away."

Munro has been called a woman's writer. At the end of her obituary, I began reading adoring comments mostly by women. Then, like magic, a stream of men's comments rolled in. Since I have enjoyed her so much, I wanted to hear what men had to say:

"One of the finest writers who ever lived, and a personal favorite. Her work is immortal."

"Over the years I've had students who have worshipped Munro's work. Mostly but not exclusively women... Her characters have a way of slipping into your thoughts and dreams... Her high art has a way of feeling artless, which is the highest compliment one writer can pay to another."

"A couple of years before she was laurated with the Nobel Prize, one of the young poets of my country wrote in his blog about Alice Munro. He added a link to The New Yorker from where I read an astonishing story "Dimensions". It was a delightful discovery and the beginning of a journey into her world of deep and subtle beauty. Because of her I also knew the writings of William Maxwell and wwnt back to Chekhov. I am grateful for her art and hope she rest in peace."